Media

Nearly every week comes more evidence that the culture of the financial sector hasn't changed much since the crisis of 2008. Greed remains the norm, along with lax ethics.

A few weeks ago, I described Wells Fargo's subprime mortgage machine as "capitalism at its worst." According to a June Washington Post

Fifty years ago, Michael Harrington wrote The Other America, documenting – among the many ravages of poverty – that millions of children in the richest country on earth went to bed hungry every night. His book inspired two Democratic presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, to launch a war on poverty, then estimated at more than 20 percent of the population.

It's now been twelve years since Bill Clinton signed into law the historic welfare reform act of 1996.

Following up on our last post on the link between climate change and extreme weather, a new scientific study was released that found that manmade climate change increases the probability of extreme weather patterns. The study was a joint effort between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the U.S. and the Met Office in the U.K.

Since 2008, working families have done everything they can to get by – changing spending habits, paying down debt, taking on 2nd (or 3rd jobs), digging into savings and retirement funds, and even cutting back on medical care – but they’re still falling behind.

So far, as a result of the LIBOR scandal -- in which Barclays manipulated the all-important London Inter-bank Offered Rate, which governs hundreds of trillions of dollars of loans, securities and derivatives -- the bank has been fined over $450 million by regulators and its CEO and COO have resigned. A broader investigation is underway. The implications of the episode to the new financial regulatory regime currently being implemented are wide-ranging and only slowly emerging.

President Obama opened up a fissure within his own party when he called yesterday for repealing the Bush tax cuts for households making over $250,000. Other Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, have argued for a repeal that would only affect households making over $1 million.

NEW YORK – Fifty years ago, Michael Harrington's classic exposé The Other America blew open the reality of widespread poverty in the United States, and while it paved the way for policies that have improved the lives of millions of Americans, the problem persists today. Today, Demos and The American Prospect are co-hosting a conference and launching an interactive data visualization to examine why proven solutions to poverty are going unheeded, leaving 46.1 million Americans in poverty in 2010.